There is some attempt to indicate latitude by the way shadows fell in a boat. Also we are told, apparently meaning midsummer or a little later: “at midnight the sun was as high as at home in the settlement when it is in northwest.” But speculations as to their course and distance have given varying results. Some think they may even have passed into Smith Sound; others that they may have crossed the Middle Water to the western shore of Baffin Bay, seeing south of them the glaciers of northeastern Baffin Land; others still that they did not get very far above Upernivik; but, whatever the exact limit, it seems to have been a notable bit of Arctic exploration, prosecuted rather at random and with scant resources. THE ESKIMOS The Eskimos (Skraelings) are referred to in this account as if already known to the settlers, though uncertain as to their home quarters and mysterious in their coming and going. Probably there had been some contact, not wholly friendly, between outranging members of the two races. The Historia Norvegiae,[197] a manuscript of the same century discovered in Scotland, says: Beyond the Greenlanders toward the north their hunters came across a kind of small people called Skraelings. When they are wounded alive their wound becomes white without issue of blood; but the blood scarcely ceases to stream out of them when they are dead. Whatever may be thought of this magical oddity of surgery, it at least seems to imply authentically some experiments in piercing or slashing the living. Whether such collision was a matter of the thirteenth century only or had first occurred in the twelfth or still earlier we cannot say. The Eskimo race was the ominous shadow of the Norse colonist from the beginning, though long unrecognized as a menace. Apparently there had been a temporary movement of these people down the western coast about the tenth century, withdrawing before the first white men appeared. After that for generations, perhaps centuries, the weaker heathen wisely kept out of sight, either beyond the water or at hunting grounds far up the Greenland coast. At last they moved nearer, and there was occasional contact while still the Norsemen were formidable. But by the fourteenth century Norse Greenland had begun to dwindle in power and population, with diminishing aid and reinforcement from Europe, and the danger drew nearer. Perhaps there was some special impulsion of the uncivilized people which resulted in the obliteration of the Western Norse Settlement, always relatively feeble. Some rumor of its need having reached the Eastern Settlement, an expedition of relief was dispatched about 1337, or perhaps a little later, accompanied by Ivar Bardsen, then or afterward steward of the Bishop, who tells the tale. Only a few stray cattle were found; presumably the colonists had been killed or carried away.